Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Lost Lake, Oregon, Perhaps One of the Coolest Places on Planet Earth.

As promised, PICTURES! :D My second camping experience was awesome. Yes, folks, I've only ever been camping twice in my life, as my parents were not outdoorsy, nor were my friends, and I was never a member of any cool clubs or groups. Sad, I know. My first experience I had a baby, not even a toddler. And I had no idea where anything was packed, so I'm frustrated, DH is yelling at me to find the damn calamine lotion, and the baby is eating the dirt. Yay camping.

The second experience was MUCH better, in part because my children are well beyond "baby" stage, and also because we literally parked our car and set up camp. Ah, car camping. Gotta love it. I am so not into hiking. You goin' hiking? Have fun. Me and my fat @$$ are going to stay right here where we can breathe. LOL

Lost Lake is at the foot of Mt. Hood, which I'm sure you know by now if you've been following my blog. It's so awesome because it's sooo gorgeous. My hubby has a telephoto lens for his camera to take far-away shots, and I was having trouble "fitting" the mountain into the pictures because it was TOO DAMN CLOSE! :P Observe the mysterious Mt. Hood:

Now that's purdy, I don't care who y'are. This shot was taken by the hubby on our trek around the lake. It has a trail that goes all the way around, about a 4 mile jaunt. Yes, I went on this hike, but only because it was FLAT and SHORT (relatively). No hills to climb, no endless walking. You know you'll be done in a couple hours (because there ain't no "power walking" with the Goings clan, thank you very much).

On this hike, we found a private cabin in the woods that had its own private dock. I hadn't seen that on our day trip to the lake, and it was sweet, all tucked away behind the foliage. No one was in the cabin, as it appeared as if they were renovating it at the time, but we did stop and sit on the small dock and take some pictures. This one I took because I loved all the shades of green:

It makes the water look swampy, when that is NOT the case at all. The water is as clear as a bell, and in fact, when we went out on the lake, you could see at least 100 feet down to your shadow on the bottom. Of course, me with my "water phobia", I didn't lean that far over the boat to take a look-see. Yes, I'm terrified of deep water and have a stigma of having water going over my head. It really freaks me out, so when I'm on the water, you rock the boat at your own damn risk. Seriously. LOL

This next shot I took because I adored the contrast and the beauty of all the colors together. It was a gorgeous day with white puffy clouds. I stopped on the trail to take a picture of a fallen log when I realized, "Wait, look at these colors!" So instead of focusing on just the log, I got a bit of the sky in there too. This is probably one of my favorite shots I took:

In this next shot, you can see my hubby's epic canoe. That beeyotch is 20 ft long. I took this picture from a rowboat our friends had rented. That's my good friend Val, all my kids, Simone, Hannah, Levi & Miriam, my DH at the back, and his faithful pooch Abe. Yes, the dog goes canoeing. Yes, the dog has a life jacket. Yes, the dog really would jump out into deep water and kill himself swimming. Hence the life jacket.

And finally we have a candid shot of the Goings campsite. In this pic, you can see all of our friends having a good time, huddled around the campfire in the early morning hours. That is our friend Kelly makin' bacon over the fire (mmm, it was good...). That's me on the log with the blankie on my lap. I look pissed off when in reality, I was fricken' cold, and seriously considering going back under the comforters we'd brought in our tent. LOL

You can see the stairs that led up to our Big Red Van on the road. The only sucky thing about this trip was the slight walk to el banyo, as it was about 100 yards away. Not that far, but far enough when you Really Gotta Pee. We brought along a makeshift potty, a 5 gallon bucket with a potty seat attachment. You go into a trash bag, then throw it away. Pretty handy during the middle of the night. It's so dark, no one can see you going. But we didn't use it during the day because the campsites are so close together, people would definately see you in all your glory. :P Thankfully, el banyo didn't stink to high heaven. That was another reason why I hated camping trip #1. That potty was toxic. This one, not so much.

Word to the wise. If you go camping in the woods in the mountains near a glacier-fed lake, it doesn't matter if it's the height of summer in August. Bring some damn winter clothing items. Holy crap, it was cold! My poor kids were popsicles! Of course, it was nice and warm out on the lake, so that was appropriate for shorts and whatnot, but back within the cover of the trees, better have your sweat suit on complete with hoodie, gloves, and thick, warm socks. Good Lord!